


the calendar

by orphan_account



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games), Batman: Arkham - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Batman: Arkham (Video Games) Setting, Angst, Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham Knight Spoilers, Bruce Wayne is Batman, Butterfly Effect, Comedy, Crack, Emotional, Fix-It, Gen, Jason Todd is Arkham Knight, Swearing, Time Loop, potential relationship, this is a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:19:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23752219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: One fateful night in Gotham during the events of Halloween. Everything plays out just as it should. And again... and again... and- maybe it's starting to change.
Relationships: Jason Todd/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 62





	the calendar

**“And above it all the butterfly effect. The sure knowledge that the entire life of a human being is like a single day in that human's life: unplannable, unpredictable, governed by the hidden tides of chaotic factors and buffered by butterfly wings...” -- Dan Simmons,** **_The Hollow Man_ **

* * *

The calendar hung above the trash can in your room for the sole convenient reason that the papers were thus easier to dispose of.

Every morning, you made best use of this little system; a habit ingrained more in muscle memory than conscious thought as you strode past the thick papery thing, tearing off yet another page of roughly A5-sized paper and let it flutter into the open and comforting arms of the waste basket below. This would inevitably lead to another page of a similar style, the day having moved forward by twenty-four hours and revealing a new number and a new month and a new weekday in a slowly-thinning stack. The system worked well, and to some extent it was satisfying to watch the numbers slowly dwindling with each day revealing its new plans to you.

Part of you had this up due to your forgetfulness; sometimes, you’d find yourself sitting up in your bed, across from the calendar and waste basket and shut door of your bedroom, disoriented at best. You’d forget what day it was and you’d forget where you were or what you were doing, and that was obviously a problem when you were meant to be a functioning adult. Then, your eyes would focus, you’d squint through your exhaustion, and you’d see the neat print of the calendar impassively informing you of yesterday and promising new prospects for today.

The other part held it dearly due to tradition. Your family used to just have a countdown for Christmas, then birthdays, and then other things took place in your lives, and suddenly those niche calendars where one could tear a page of the day off every single time were just a household staple for you. You couldn’t imagine not having it involved in your daily routine.

Speaking of daily routines—yours was about to get kicked in the ass spectacularly.

Most of it had to do with that news report that had kept you clamoring up half the night. A fact you now resented, as you grumbled through the kitchenette of your Ryker Heights apartment on the hunt for a coffee capsule to feed to the feasting jaws of the coffee maker. Crouching down to rummage through one of your cabinets, you let out a noise akin to triumph when you came up with one capsule left, happily inserting it before deeming it safest to turn on the TV one room over.

Last night’s news report had left what you assumed was half of Gotham shaken. The gruelling crime scene reports were not uncommon in a city as grisly and gothic as this, with the norm being neighbourhoods full of gang wars and general discontent, but yesterday had left a different sensation hanging in the stale, smog-riddled air of Central Gotham. Pauli’s Diner near Grand Central had not been spared in having all the gruesome details divulged, police too scared to touch the scene with a ten-foot pole, let alone come collect the bodies. Thus, the EMTs had been busy gathering people into what you assumed had been the morgue at Mercy General or something.

But, no, that had not unsettled you. Of course, it was a shame it had happened, and the grainy security camera footage of the diner’s patrons tearing into each other in what could only be described as an animalistic loss of humanity was enough to help you lose your appetite for the foreseeable future.

What had unsettled you, just like any other Gothamite was likely unsettled by now, was the following hijacking of the broadcast, and every other screen within the close proximity of the gothic city. On it, following a few glitches, revealed itself to be the iconic, glassy-eyed and bag-headed face of Scarecrow.

Supervillains were also not a thing that traditionally frightened you. Not to be mistaken—a raging Two-Face storming into the bank the _one_ time you decide to leave your house was nothing short of terrifying, and the insanely spine-chilling mass murders the Joker used to broadcast were obviously a slight inclination to maybe stay inside and consider boarding up your windows, but aside from that the reason you were actually scared of Scarecrow showing up was that _he was meant to be dead_.

Almost two years ago.

Same time as—

Why the fuck was there a butterfly in your apartment?

You blinked once, then twice, then pulled your mug from the coffee machine to take a quick sip of caffeine only to burn your tongue. You hissed, slammed the mug down with a harsh _clink_ , and kept your gaze on the creature quietly ambling near the potted plants you had on one of your window sills in an attempt at domesticity and normalcy in Gotham Freaking City of all places. The scalding heat on your tongue an uncomfortable reminder that you were awake and in your right mind, you suddenly began pondering why, in October, in busy high-rise Gotham, there would be a butterfly which happened to find its way into your apartment.

You’d remember giving a butterfly the key to your apartment.

Was it just like a spider situation? Did it have to pay rent? Did you have to kill it? Would this sound slightly strange if the butterfly were a human?

You were too tired to mull it all over.

Slowly approaching the thing, you appraised its little flapping wings. The black pattern was most distinct, surrounding its fuzzy little body and bridging into little fractures of black on a background of… wait, you had to get closer for this. It looked… yellow. Yellow and black. Black and yellow.

When Batman first grew notorious, people said that’s what his suit had looked like. Black cape and ears, a yellow symbol burning bright on his chest, outlining the distinct black bat crest. You would neither be able to deny nor confirm this, not being caught up on the vigilante legend.

You weren’t quite sure why a butterfly made you think of _Batman_ of all people.

You also weren’t quite sure why there was a butterfly in your apartment.

It was a pretty butterfly, you had to give it that. Despite the foggy and cloudy atmosphere outside, its colours were distinct, and it looked like what you could only assume and describe as at peace. Unbothered by the reality of its location, blissfully ignorant of what horrid city it had found itself in. Sighing lowly, part of you wished you could resonate with the butterfly, and also be blissfully unaware of the news blaring in the background.

“ _Final evacuation buses will be leaving at four o’clock sharp tonight, in preparation of the citizens of Gotham preparing for the worst onslaught of notorious super-villain Scarecrow—_ ”

You glanced up at the clock. You’d slept in late today, considering it was Saturday. That, and the news had kept you raw with anxiety. You had three hours, at best, to get out of the city, should it be by bus or hitching another ride. Definitely not a taxi—no one was stupid enough to get into a taxi in Gotham, especially not when the hysteria of evacuation would mean that drivers would be happy to charge double to buy themselves some expensive shrinks after hearing their passengers whine on about Scarecrow for hours.

You did not blame the taxi drivers of Gotham for their ridiculous prices; the people were nuts, after all. But for the love of God, if they’re gonna charge so much, they should at least lock the doors so that a mugger can’t just slide into the backseat or a particularly determined asshat can shove you out of the car or carpool along.

You decided to move away from the windowsill and towards your cooling coffee, blowing over the rim of the mug before taking a cautious sip. At the relief of not burning your aching tongue yet again, you took a longer sip, relishing the bitter taste of caffeine which would at least keep you awake and hyper-vigilant during the mess of the evacuation. Couldn’t risk falling asleep when napping during this stress probably meant life or death.

 _Your choice matters_ , a voice said from behind you.

You screamed, almost dropping your mug and jerking around to face your empty apartment. No one was present other than yourself, and maybe you could count the broom with seven jackets precariously hooked over it. Yet you were absolutely positive you had heard a voice, distinct yet uncertain, echoing inside your mind. What the hell?

Had you puffed some of Scarecrow’s gas already?

 _Your choice matters_ , the voice repeated, and this time you only jumped slightly. Your brows pinched together, warily eyeing the room and trying to gauge where you’d heard the voice from. If you could pin it to a source, you could excuse it and move on. Maybe you’d changed your phone’s ringtone while you were drunk and it now told you about your choice mattering, for whatever goddamn reason. But when you strained for some sort of answer, you realised the voice had been coming from inside your head.

Oh, great. You were hallucinating.

“Oh, whatever,” you mumbled, taking another long sip. The coffee was meant to keep you coherent, not teeter you over the edge of sanity.

_Will you choose?_

Oh, for the love of—

“Who the hell is talking to me?” You asked into the empty space of your apartment. No response. At a lack of hearing the voice for another few, almost infinitely-dragging moments, you took another long swig of your beverage, before setting it down onto the counter and slowly moving through your living room. No one in sight, and everything was untouched. Was your mystery person hiding in the vents? Did people do that?

You’d once overheard that Batman did that. To sneak up on people.

Whatever-the-fuck. Batman was not coming in to sneak up on you, nor was he going to philosophise your effect on your life with you and discuss your choices, nor were you fully convinced he was actually real. This was just a really bad fever dream.

You pressed the back of your hand to your forehead. _Did_ you have a fever?

When your name was uttered by the same insistent voice, you finally felt the cold sweat clamming up the back of your neck. Now you were fully aware this was no coincidence, not just random words or a really loud TV show or movie blasting from your neighbours through the thin walls of the complex. This was for you, and you were hearing it. Instinctively, your head snapped over to where the butterfly flapped around the little mint tree you’d been tending to for the past few months.

_Will. You. Choose?_

“Choose wh—what am I choosing?” You asked, somewhat in despair. This was the ultimate level of crazy. You were actually entertaining whatever voice was in your head, or wherever its source was. You had no hopes of finding the source. At a lack of response, your voice took up a much more demanding tone, shoulders shaking and lips curling. “What do you want from me?”

Silence.

Then, _I want you to choose._

“What do you want me to choose?” You felt stupid, parrotting the same question over and over with no hope at a straight answer. Against your will, your feet began moving you to the windowsill yet again. Right until you were standing mere inches from it, eyes trained on the butterfly in some sick hope that you may have been communicating with it.

Butterflies weren’t telepathic, were they?

Was this one hit with a spray of ACE chemicals? Was it actually speaking to you? Were you the butterfly-whisperer?

The voice started singing inside your head again, this time the volume indistinctly low yet simultaneously blaring right beside you. _Will you choose?_

You cringed. Then, you kneeled in front of the butterfly, somewhat enraptured by its quickly flapping wings and hypnotising pattern of lines and splotches. Gnawing on your lip, you mulled over the possibilities of a sane decision, then realised there was none.

“You know what, fine,” you shrugged, your voice low as to not startle the butterfly. “I will choose.”

A sensation that could only be described as a weight lifting off your chest enveloped you. Suddenly, your head felt clearer than it had in weeks, your extremities tingling with pent-up energy. You blinked quickly, perhaps mimicking the flap of the butterfly’s wings, then parted your lips in confusion at the strange serenity you had been granted. One moment passed, then two. The voice was gone.

You felt eerily light, as if you had grown wings.

And then you slipped out of consciousness.

* * *

The first thing you noticed when you came to was that your joints were stiff and your neck sore from having passed out on the ground.

The second thing was the very distinct memory of having no idea what the fuck was going on.

The third and final clue of red flags screaming at you that something was wrong was, when you opened your eyes, all that met you was a familiar darkness only cut by industrial-grade neon lights.

You sat up so quickly you almost felt your brain lurch out of your skull, prompting a quiet groan out of you as you clutched your head. The headache had returned, but the clarity was surprisingly still there. You shakily managed to stand, and observe the dark surroundings of your apartment.

The butterfly was long gone.

You let out a short, but sharp curse. _And so were the buses._

A glance at the clock confirmed it—half past seven, and the clock was still ticking and fully functional. A new dread unlike the heavy anxiety you’d felt hours ago clawed at the back of your throat, burrowing a thick lump in your throat and a blazing burn in the corners of your eyes. Only then did you allow yourself to exhale, slowly and out of your nose, just like the breathing exercises you’d done with your mother when she had gotten into a fad of doing yoga. Except, now you did not feel put-together or ‘zen’, as your mom would’ve joked with you. You just felt afraid, and anxious, and confused, and slightly cheated out of life.

It would be far too late for anyone to come and save you.

Gotham would’ve locked its gates two and a half hours ago, declaring itself as a decrepit wasteland to humanity until the threat of not-dead Scarecrow dousing the city in fear gas not unlike how an exterminator took to a nest of rats blew over. Until then, its only citizens would be, obviously, Scarecrow, the police department trying to stop Scarecrow and maintain a grip on the city, the moronic thugs and gang members who’d stuck around the city to either support Scarecrow, antagonise the police department or just be general dicks, and Batman.

Right? Batman would be here. There was no way he wouldn’t be. It was Batman, after all.

You couldn’t really imagine Batman—or whoever was meant to be under that cowl of his—on one of the dozens of evacuation buses, huddled in with scared citizens he’d gruffly protected when Blackgate got wrecked on Christmas Eve, when Arkham Asylum had been taken over by the Joker, when Arkham City threatened to rain missiles from the sky. This—an empty, abandoned Gotham, devoid of hope and filled only with the begrudging allies of the GCPD, the thugs he’d build a reputation of beating up on, and one of his many enemies—would be the urban myth’s favourite playground, the perfect landscape to truly release all frustrations on the world.

Or whatever motivations he had for doing whatever he did. Maybe a big grudge or vendetta of sorts. You had very few chances to contemplate exactly what Batman thought he was achieving by permanently crippling the criminal underbelly of Gotham City, other than maybe outrageous hospital bills.

Nevertheless, Batman would not save you from your predicament. You also doubted he’d take you seriously if your justification of needing help was _I think I talked to a telepathic butterfly, and then I passed out and missed all evacuation buses._ You were pretty sure the only thing that explanation would lead to was getting thrown into a loony bin by Batman himself, and becoming the new Joker or what-the-shit.

Not that Batman could throw you, or anyone, into Arkham anymore. Place was a burned-down shithole, begging to be renovated by whatever mountain of cash Bruce Wayne decided to throw at it when he needed a good PR mop-up.

After calculating Batman out of your picture of plans, you set about wondering the pretty obvious— _what the hell do I do now?_ The sanest option would have to be getting to the GCPD building on Bleake, convincing the officers that you weren’t some loony trying to shiv them, and then camp out in the precinct until hell blew over and you could head on your merry way home. The only issue then would be transport, considering public transport was down and you did not own a car, and even if you did, you doubted you’d get past the waves of thugs and wanderers milling in the streets, starting trash fires and defacing public property at the first prospect of authority having lost its power.

In short, the sanest option was not the safest option.

Technically, the safest option would be to stay boarded up here; somehow triple-lock your door, maybe shove one of your cabinets in front of it as an attempt at a barricade—given you had any vague physical strength to pull off such a maneuver. Then, you’d make some pancakes, turn off the lights and shut the blinds, find your old baseball bat from high school somewhere, and then cower in here until hell had torn its claws through the streets of Gotham and the burn of it had dispersed with the autumn winds. However, there was always a chance that the thugs outside would somehow make their way into apartments, maybe to loot or whatever, and then break down your door and mug you and, you know, throw you out of your window and watch you plummet to your death for the fun of it. Boredom always inspired creativity and need for entertainment, so who knows what they might come up with.

The safest option was also not all too safe. Great.

There was another option, nagging in the back of your mind. It was to actually somehow find Batman, tell him about your prophetic butterfly, and somehow get roped into safety and feel like you’d achieved something. Now, that one stood out for some reason, probably because it was so _stupid_ . You hallucinated some butterfly giving you the illusion of choice, and now you were absolutely losing your marbles in trying to seek out a vigilante. One of the golden rules of Gotham was to _not_ seek out the goddamn vigilantes, yet you’d been so overloaded on both sleep and caffeine that apparently you now thought that was a viable plan.

You decided to dub that plan as the ‘crazy option’.

Out of all three of your options at the moment—the echo of _will you choose_ drumming inside your mind—the second seemed the best. It wasn’t smart, not even vaguely, but it was safe. And safe was what you needed right now, when you had to come to terms with your situation. So you moved quickly through the apartment, barricading the door with an easily-moveable dresser that groaned in a way which almost scared you into believing it would collapse under your touch, locking your doors and your windows even if you doubted any moron would be stupid enough to climb to the eighth storey of this building just to break into one apartment, and sitting your ass down on the couch to catch your breath and _think_.

You’d barely sat down before you jumped up again, rushing to your room. _That’s_ why you’d been feeling off—you forgot to tear the latest day from your trusty calendar.

The rip of the page was one of the only noises registering in your ears. It used to be the incessant blaring of traffic on the streets, the loud grinding of mechanics as the train shot by, the constant _noise_ that seemed to live in the city. But now, it was deathly quiet, the solitude punctured only by the tear of the page revealing October thirty-first, Saturday, to your perplexed gaze.

The neon lights outside, practically buzzing with electricity, illuminated the three and the zero of the paper you were currently holding in your hands. Friday. Yesterday. Twenty-four hours ago.

When things had been so simple.

* * *

The original plan for Halloween was a great divergence from your previous childish traditions.

When you’d been younger, you’d go trick-or-treating, always wearing costumes with long sleeves lest your over-protective, yoga-enthusiast mother forced a winter coat over a costume that simply did not belong. That had only happened once, when you’d stupidly worn a Tinkerbell costume with short sleeves, and then a metallic blue puffer jacket over it which echoed the sentiment of, “You’re gonna get a cold, it’s freezing outside!” The humiliating defeat of your friends guffawing over your mismatched costume and the people who had opened their doors only to ask what you were supposed to be dressed up as—your telltale wings giving away your identity crushed under the weight of the winter jacket—had wisely set you up to get creative and _smart_ about trick-or-treating.

Last year was the last time you went. With some of your high-school friends, as more of a joke than anything. You did get a decent amount of candy, and also a decent amount of confused stares considering how old you were.

This year, you were meant to become one of those grouches who hoarded the candy people usually gave away for trick-or-treating, become more of a self-treater by munching on chocolates that had been flying off shelves in bulk as suburban neighbourhoods braced for the onslaught of excited children dressing up in increasingly ridiculous costumes.

Point was, you clearly wouldn’t be doing that this year.

Originally, you were meant to make pancakes as a comfort snack of voluntarily barricading yourself inside your home, except then you realised that took _effort_ —and you were also out of eggs and there was no way in high heaven or hell that you’d even _consider_ risking the trip out to the convenience store less than a block away—and instead settled for a bowl of cereal. Having agreed to go dark to attract less attention to your apartment and avoid making it a beacon for serial killers to gravitate towards in a similar fashion to moths gravitating towards light, you had taken a blind reach into your cabinet among your cereal boxes, surprising yourself with whatever you happened upon.

You almost spat out your spoonful when you realised you were eating Lucky Charms.

_Yeah, like anything was lucky about this fuckfest of a conundrum._

However, your one relief while you shoveled nauseatingly sweet cereal into your mouth was that you managed to turn on your radio; not wanting to risk the light from the TV, the radio was your next best bet on staying updated on the outside world. Considering your idiot decision of isolating yourself, you at least wanted to stay in the loop while you were half-out for the count. It took a bit of fiddling at first, a disgusted sneer finding its way to your face when the radio connected to Jack Ryder’s bullshit podcast— _streaming from the interrogation room of the GCPD_ , he gloated to what you assumed were his three listeners—and instead fiddled with the controls until you heard the scratchy speaker settle on the telltale theme song of the GCN that had imbedded itself into your subconscious. There, you stopped, before settling into your couch to comfortably listen in.

“ _The previously thought abandoned streets of Central Gotham are now swarmed by armored personnel carriers of a private military organisation have been deployed in Gotham—_ ” Your brows scrunched together, then raised in alarm. What the hell? “ _he Gotham City Police Department has yet to get a spokesperson on the line to update us, but we’ll continue reporting on the situation as it develops. Back to you, Laura._ ”

You sprang from the couch as if your bowl of Lucky Charms had zapped you, rushing over to the window in a similar manner you imagined kids running to the window on Christmas Eve in an attempt to see Santa in a thicket of snow. But you weren’t looking for anything nearly as positive or fictional as Santa Claus, your fingers tugging a few strips of your blinds away to give you a clear line of sight to the street. Your mouth ran unusually dry. You were looking for the apparent APCs that were now launched in Gotham.

First, one vehicle drove by. You were gonna brush it off as a hotwired car, but the distinctly strong, jeep-like frame and bigger wheels, among the barely-distinct insignia of _something_ as the car sped along confirmed both the podcast blaring behind you and the dread knotting inside your stomach.

Then it was another. And another. Three of them, in single file in a multi-laned road, speeding after one another towards Drescher and the towering buildings of the financial district.

If you weren’t beyond unsettled now, you would’ve made a joke about the cliché-ness of villain vehicles driving in a single file and practically tail-gating each other. If the first one hit the brakes, the other two were eating shit.

This couldn’t possibly be Scarecrow, could it? He was too… dramatic for schemes like this. You’d figured that his penchant for madness and anarchy and fear would’ve made him refuse to cooperate with a military organisation, private or not.

Whatever. You were safe in your room, with your cozy little radio keeping you in the loop. If you didn’t make any other foolish decisions, you’d be _fine_.

* * *

A glance at the clock told you it was three in the morning. _Witching Hour_ , the dorkier part of your brain chimed in unhelpfully, except you muted that thought because right now it was _not fucking funny._

It sure as hell _felt_ like Witching Hour, when you dared a glance outside. It didn’t feel like it was three in the morning, with how agonisingly bright the sky was.

An explosion had occurred… somewhere. The blast hadn’t been loud enough to wake you from your half-dozing, but the rumble and cold gust of wind that followed it sure had. You’d been up within moments, the brightness giving you the false sense of hope that you’d survived until the morning, and that maybe this was some sort of pathetic fallacy thing that meant you’d get out of here—or at least be safe to leave—soon.

And what had met you instead was a thick smog of amber sprawling out before you, engulfing the lower half of your apartment building and a good majority of Gotham’s rooftops.

You were so unbelievably, irrevocably _fucked._

So that’s what Scarecrow meant when he was gonna engulf Gotham in fear gas. You thought—screw it, you knew that this technically meant _that_ , but up until then you’d had no idea how the hell you were meant to picture it! Now, it appeared you hadn’t been intended to reach into your imagination as much as you had meant to rely on your deepest and darkest nightmares.

The radio was a jagged sound of mess. Previously, it had been warning you off broadcasts—hijacked only once, by the apparent leader of the APCs and militia that had been storming around the city from what you could gather out of your window. That had gone swimmingly— _“They’ll get a charred crater if they try,”_ was still prominently ringing inside your skull, voice modulator and all—and it had also managed to rile up the better half of the reporters which had now taken to stirring the city into a frenzy. To make a long story of an arduous eight hours during which you were awake short, you’d stayed updated on the radio and had discovered much less than what you bargained for.

Now, it was static-y, probably to do with the whole blast of fear gas which had fried half the city’s power lines based on the shocks of lightning bolts swimming beneath the surface of the cloud below you. You strained your ears for any sound of the reporters, Laura, Jared and whats-his-face, to update you as outsiders on the situation.

Unless the gas had gotten as far as past the city limits and caught up with the unsuspecting evacuees. In which case, _shit._

“ _Huge cloud of gas… Scarecrow’s threat… Arkham Knight… underground… drastic measure…”_

You couldn’t infer much with that panicked buzzing of the radio, but the simplicity of the situation was that you were screwed.

And that’s when you heard the banging.

It wasn’t necessarily close to you— _yet,_ your mind chided—but suddenly it was enough for you to turn the radio’s incessant static volume to zero, and your mind to start reeling. From this far up, you wouldn’t have heard the shatter of glass, the groaning of steel, if people forced their way into the building. In these conditions? Would they even be… they would’ve gotten exposed to the gas, wouldn’t they?

That explained the screams and snarls now accompanied with the banging. Storming up the steps, you concluded. Looking for… what would they be looking for? A semblance of sanity within an abandoned apartment complex? A safe space following the fear gas’ crippling effects? Their next victim?

Every rattling thud of the staircase, every gunshot and every distinct shatter of drywall was another time your heart leapt into your throat, holding you over a teetering precipice of probably dying from a heart attack. The banging was now much louder, and you were scared to turn on the radio or move or make any noise to indicate you were here.

“Fuck,” you whispered under your breath, more as an expelling of your stress than a delayed reaction. Your eyes stung again, and you slowly crept into the kitchen towards where you’d stashed the baseball bat.

_You have to choose._

You clamped a hand over your mouth just in time to muffle your shriek, shoulders jerking and eyes dancing around your apartment. Your breaths now came in laboured pants, as if you’d been running a marathon for an awfully long time, as if this was the final stretch in your miserable life. The slightly reasonable part of your mind, mostly drowned out by the panic screech of hysteria festering inside your brain, reminded you that you’d heard this voice before.

 _Yeah, and you passed out afterwards,_ you brain snarked at you. You shut your eyes, shaking your head as if that could will the voice or the fucking telepathic butterfly away from you.

_You have to save the city._

“Save the—oh, fuck _off_ ,” you whined in a low tone, doing your best to keep your terrified response below the range of a whisper. Surely, if the voice were in your head, it’d hear your response even if you whispered. “I’m not saving the goddamn city. I wanna—God, I don’t know, what do I do?”

_Save the city. Choose._

Nausea rolled inside your stomach as you caught sight of the butterfly lazily flapping its wings near the mint plant. The banging outside was getting louder. They were on your floor now. Would they reach your apartment?

 _You can start over,_ the voice continued coaxing. _You can choose._

Louder.

_Will you choose?_

“Fine, fine—shit, fine, I choose,” it came out of you in a babble, before the door broke down, the cabinet giving way, and suddenly a gun was pointed in your face in a flash of white that lifted you in the air.

* * *

You found yourself standing in front of the calendar once again.

Friday, the thirtieth of October, the calendar said. Saturday, the thirty-first, your phone screen lighting up clarified. Which meant you had to tear another page off. You reached forward almost eagerly, holding the edge of the paper and tearing away—

And then you paused. _What the fuck?_

Saturday, the thirty-first of October, the calendar in front of you insisted, the page half revealed while you were mid-tear.

You felt… weird.

 _You have to save the city,_ the butterfly’s voice rang inside your skull. But it wasn’t there, and it wasn’t talking right now. It was a distant memory, yet almost instantaneously in the forefront of your mind, as if you’d heard it minutes ago. But technically, you’d heard it… eight hours in the future. After the city had… it’d gone…

“Oh my God, the butterfly actually thinks I’m going to save the city,” you mumbled dumbly, then slapped yourself in the forehead when you realised just how _awful_ and _insane_ you sounded. 

Would the butterfly be mad if you didn’t save the city? Or didn’t even try to?

Were you seriously considering the moral ramifications of not fulfilling a butterfly’s wishes?

Whatever.

Option one sounded good. Maybe if you got to the GCPD, you could warn them of Scarecrow and the APCs and that awful cloud of fear gas that drove the city mad. Given, they could throw you into lockup for suggesting something as weird as that, but you had to try, right?

And so, you grabbed your metal baseball bat from your room—where you’d last left it a week ago, instead of in the kitchen, you mused—and tightened the laces on your sneakers. For good measure, you pulled a coat over your hoodie and pocketed your phone, shoulders trembling by the time you reached your front door.

You were going out there. All alone. In a city full of crime-invested thugs and gang members and murderers. In a city where there’d be a private militia, and some Arkham Knight, and later on these weird _tank_ things.

Well, your jacket was already on. No turning back now.

The walk downstairs had been peaceful, yet on edge. Nobody had gotten into the building just yet, and nobody seemed inclined given there was no sign of life. Yet every single noise, echo and creak of the building had managed to raise the fine hairs on the back of your neck on end, every little gust of wind feeling like someone was breathing down your back. When you turned, nobody was there.

As expected, you tried to reason. Nobody was with you.

Yet you couldn’t shake the feeling of being _watched._

Near the front was the landlord’s office—surprisingly, the door ajar. From its open space and a slight lean to the left, you could see the security monitors, grainy video footage of within the building’s public hallways and just outside and out back. Then, your eyes trailed down to a handgun, left behind on the table.

Nobody was inside.

You stared at the gun in fascination, as if you’d never seen a gun before. You had—but it was never for the taking.

Finally, you blinked rapidly. Then, you let out a short breath, scolding yourself in the palpably tense air, “I’m not taking a fucking gun, jeez.”

You left the building gun-less, and locked the front door for good measure as if the random street thugs that trailed past here wouldn’t feel inclined to just smash into the windows. It made you feel better, at least.

Now the real fun began.

A horrifying venture into the unknown.

You knew Ryker Heights fairly well—you worked in an office not too far from here, walking to and from work with one of your coworkers every day as she lived one block over. You walked and got around often enough to _know_ it, when it was bustling full of life and other people were there and regarded you in that guarded glance. Unless they knew you, in which case they let their guard down for a moment and put up a classic Gothamite face, grinning and jesting and giving you rough pats which translated into ‘take care, kid’. 

But you didn’t know this version of Ryker Heights. Abandoned. Cold. Devoid of life, save for a few trash fires and the pressing matter of hundreds of thugs feeling enough freedom to roam the streets now that the citizens had run away.

You soldiered on, bat in hand with that pathetic baseball-grip you’d learned in your junior year of high school, teeth chattering despite your excessive layers and feeling particularly stupid that you’d decided to entertain the sane option tonight.

Most of your cowering had been successful—you hid behind holes in walls whenever footsteps of voices startled you, and you managed to avoid the eyes and directions in which you’d spotted danger on your path. Every time a car raced by, you were crouching behind a broken-in store window, or huddling into a post box in some pathetic attempt at a shield. But you shitty survival skills had paid off well enough to get past Perdition Bridge unscathed and unobserved, heading through the smaller and less conspicuous alleyways of Chinatown before somehow finding yourself in the home stretch.

The Cauldron was a bit more of an open patch. And, despite the bright blue lights of the GCPD’s main police building and the bat-signal, tearing through clouds and light rain above to shine what people considered a beacon of hope into the sky, there were lots of thugs milling about.

 _It’s like they wanted to get caught_ was your first thought. Discomfort settled like cement in your stomach when you realised it was more that they were taunting the police.

Nevertheless, you had to get through that—but _how_ ? How were you going to get through a good half dozen guys wearing spiky helmets and donning knives rusted with what you assumed to be blood? You were no Batman. Hell, you were minimally armed with a dingy metal baseball bat you’d kept since graduation due to your sentimentality, not because you actually knew how to _use_ it to defend yourself. Goddamn, maybe if you’d taken self defense classes that reached beyond just spraying mace…

Their attention was momentarily captured by the roar of an engine. Whatever vehicle it was, you did not care—your path was clear and _you had to move now._

Your sneakers pressed against the ground in a quick flurry of steps as you sprinted away, carefully leaping over puddles and cursing the heavy layers which had now started weighing you down. You cringed slightly as you felt rainwater drain into your socks, then realised you had more pressing matters to attend to. Namely, not letting your heart burst in your chest from just how _stressed_ running one stretch out in the open made you feel.

Finally, you stopped short at the gargantuan shutter doors of the GCPD’s underground entry, the light shining red in that friendly _no, you may not enter_ manner. Catching your breath, you gathered the courage to shout to where you assumed would be the security camera. “Hey!” You shouted. “Hey, let me in!”

No response. Except a quick glance behind confirmed the worst of your suspicions. Your shout for attention had roused the response of the thugs a ways off, who had now visibly zeroed in on you.

Panic shot up your spine, almost debilitatingly crippling. For a second, you could do nothing but focus on the imposing figures approaching you curiously, before you realised where the fuck you actually were and the danger you were in—

You slammed on the garage door, fist curled tightly shut while your palm clammed up against the handle of the baseball bat. “Heyletmeinplease!”

By some miracle, the shutter door slid open approximately a quarter of the way. You chanced a glance back to the thugs who had now taken to increasing their pace, clearly alert and ready to hurt you, but the message was loud and clear—someone had seen or heard your cry for help, and taken pity on the poor fool being manipulated by a butterfly.

You crouched, ducking into the confines of the garage. A hand grabbed your foot and you screamed, lurching backwards. Shutter would close anytime now, except when it did it’d take both the thug’s grubby hand and your foot with it. Heart thumping in your chest, blood rushing in your ears, you took the one decision you could think of in that moment and brought your metal bat down onto the guy’s hand with a decisive _thud_ , followed shortly by the crunch of bone.

You cringed. He screamed. Your leg jerked away. The shutter door fell down as the wall between you two.

Despite the awful rush of adrenaline that had seized you like a ragdoll during that and the fact that the ground was cold and damp and you were pretty sure you’d started _crying_ in the panic—or maybe that was just rain?—you sat back, letting the bat clatter to the ground and some fifty pounds lift from where they had been constraining your chest.

You’d made it to the GCPD. Sane option, accomplished. Now, to talk your way through the night.

 _Save the city,_ you mocked the butterfly inside your head.

* * *

You did not save the city.

In fact, you screwed up royally from the get-go; first, you came in with a dented baseball bat clearly looking like a maniac, which led to narrowly avoiding being tased by one of the guys at the door by babbling about safety and whatnot. This was followed by your stammered explanation of what was about to transpire from what little you’d gathered from the radio—the APCs, the Arkham Knight, cloud of fear gas, the whole shebang. Hindsight had been very far behind with you today, and had not managed to reel in the word-vomit you’d produced in front of the officers.

Naturally, you ended up in a holding cell.

The first story had been that you were affiliated with Scarecrow— _somehow_ —and wanted to get a rise out of the police department. But a scan of your face and your name came up clean in their crime system records, and they had little clues about your motivations. But one of the cops—Jefferson? Seaman? Whomstever the fuck—was absolutely _insistent_ that you were an evil overlord trying to lower the morale of the GCPD, as if you had nothing better to do with your time, and that you needed to be held accountable for your actions of conspiring treason.

With the way he spoke and had enunciated _treason_ , you’d think that you’d crushed _his_ wrist with the bat.

The second story—and the one the rest of the officers present unanimously agreed with—was that you were simply a wackjob who’d either gotten a good huff of fear gas or had the wide-stretching imagination of a three-year-old with crayons and a blank white wall.

Either way, you needed to stay out of their way and keep from bothering them, hence the holding cell. At least you had a clear line of sight to the TV, you mused, as well as the immediate knowledge that you were safe from any thugs or fear toxin. Well, maybe not thugs—the room next door over was stuffed to the brim with the madmen Batman or some officer kept carting in.

Speaking of Batman—you saw him for the first time. Like, real-life, up-close. He was _tall_ as all hell, the sharp and pointy ears of his cowl maybe enunciating that height, and he was wearing his grey-and-black suit-thing with his long black leather cape that was just the perfect hint of inspired by Bram Stoker’s _Dracula_ or Edgar Allan Poe’s _The Raven._ It had been amazing—you were well aware that you’d stared like a kid in a candy store, shiny-eyed and everything—and simultaneously terrifying. Realising that he was actually, you know, _human_ and real and whatnot was somehow scarier than considering him as some urban myth that swept the city’s streets clean of crime.

Because an urban myth, fine. Some deity had taken pity on this trainwreck of a city and said _you know, maybe we’ll give them this Batman legend to take the stress off. Until he causes tons of public property damage and everyone has to pay for that shit, and all._

But a human? Just the same as all those thugs on the street he beat up, just donning a dark leather cape and hidden behind a bat-eared cowl? A living, breathing, _mortal_ human who could get hurt and die and could _feel_ and all those things? And despite all that, he _still_ went out there every goddamn night and beat the shit out of everyone until the commissioner reluctantly accepted his help in lowering the crime rate?

Now _that_ was a horrifying thought you loved to hate and hated to love.

You only caught glimpses of him behind bars. He paid you no heed; you were not important to him or his crusade in salvaging the city from a madman—or, based on the TV you could see, multiple madmen. You were just another citizen, useless and unarmed and stupid.

Which was why you felt so stupid when dawn was on the brink of drifting on the horizon, TV blaring loud enough for half the precinct to come swarm around it, as everyone watched in silent horror as Wayne Manor burned.

Who had expected Batman to be _Bruce Wayne_ under the mask? More so, who had expected Bruce Wayne to go home, barely get past his front door, and die in a fiery flurry of explosions ravaging one of the most iconic pieces of architecture in Gotham?

As everyone watched and chattered ahead of you, you paused. The butterfly was fluttering around the dingy iron bars of your cell door. Your vision blurred, then focused again as it flew further into your cell.

 _Will you choose?_ It asked.

Nausea burned inside your gut all over. “Again? Why—” You paused, dropping your voice to a lower whisper when an officer gave you the side-eye. “Why am I choosing?”

 _Save the city,_ it said, with no particular inclination to respond to your pleas. _Will you choose?_

“Save the—like, the whole city?” You fought to keep your hysterical whisper just that—a whisper. Can’t have the loony look even loonier than before. “Even Bruce Wayne?”

 _You have to save the city,_ the butterfly informed very unhelpfully. _Will you choose?_

You let out a short, shaky breath. Shoulders trembling, eyes burning. “Fine. I choose.”

That awful light feeling overwhelmed you again, as well as the sensation of your vision going white.

* * *

You found yourself standing in front of the calendar once again.

Friday, the thirtieth of October, the calendar said. Saturday, the—

“Oh, fuck _off._ Not this again.”

You tore the page off, letting it flutter into the bin on its own accord, and stomped towards your living room. After letting out a long breath, you shook your head. _What now?_ You had to save the city—you had to save Bruce Wayne, who was actually Batman, and _ohmygodwhatdoido._

This was _awful._ Definitely not the way you wanted to spend your Halloween.

Okay, planning. This was fine. You just had to figure something out.

This led you to finding yourself in the same predicament as last night. Or was it in a few hours? How the fuck could you keep the time when you were living through the same day?

Nevertheless, your bat was in hand, and you were at the base of the fire escape from the GCPD building. How you’d gotten there was beyond you—the thugs hadn’t been there yet, because you’d managed to get there earlier—but now you had the true problem. How the hell would you get to the rooftop of the police department without immediately getting booked?

By smashing the cameras with your bat, apparently. Now was the rough part—climbing up the stairs slippery from the rain, stumbling and grazing your knee once and quietly cursing as you clambered up the stairs in a fashion of what could only be described as a newborn deer.

Okay. Roof. You could see Mercy Bridge from here, but its sides weren’t lowered. You could hear the roar of vehicles speeding below. You could practically envision how most of these buildings would be drowned out by fear gas.

And you sighed as you had to carefully navigate more slippery ground, to get to the highest point of this godforsaken building.

It was much bigger up close, but you couldn’t dare to think about that for now. Your hands went for the switch, the beacon off this time—perhaps someone came up to turn it on later?—and you tugged. The light was blinding, the hum of electricity deafening, but it was done—the bat-signal shone proudly in the sky, with you standing beside it.

Now you had to hope your plan worked.

“Oh, please please please…” You muttered to yourself more than anyone.

“Who are you?” Came from behind you.

You shrieked, almost reaching for the bat and spinning around—only for the bat to be promptly torn out of your feeble grip and clattered to the ground. While the shock of being snuck up on wore off, you realised you’d achieved exactly what you wanted. Batman towered over you, expression grim and eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Oh, thank God,” you breathed out. “Okay, so, I need your help maybe and we have to make sure Scarecrow doesn’t gas the city and that the Knight doesn’t let his tanks run around and—”

You paused when you realised Batman was looking at you like a man who had witnessed his son insist to be called Captain Ravioli* in front of the waitstaff of a high-end Italian restaurant. And then you deflated.

“Let’s start again,” you muttered, more to yourself than anything. “So, you need to, uh, destroy the Arkham Knight’s tanks.”

His expression did not change.

“Maybe… send Scarecrow to lockup ASAP.”

Nothing.

“What about… ask Robin to help you handle the roster of villains tonight?”

“Just who do you think you are?” Was the first thing Batman said after your horrid outburst. He wasn’t… _mad_ , you thought—maybe hoped was a better word—but he sure as hell was perplexed and clearly vexed at you wasting his precious time. Figures. He looked fairly inclined to leave, and although you couldn’t blame him, you couldn’t _let_ him do that either.

“I’m just—look, I know you’re Bruce Wayne,” your voice dropped down to a whisper as if you were in a library, or as if someone would be able to hear you during this downpour of rain and ambient rooftop scene. “I know, and don’t ask me how because you’re probably not gonna believe me, but I _know._ And I know you’re gonna try to blow up your house at the end of the night—well, not try, nobody stops you, but whatever—and that’s cool, whatever, interior design inspiration strikes at different hours, but _I can’t let you do that._ ”

His expression was flat, but his eyes shone in that confused dad of Captain Ravioli again.

Very slowly, he spoke, seeming to pick his words in that same way a picky eater would try to navigate a salad bar. “You have clearly suffered some… stress. I can escort you into GCPD where you will be kept safe until this all passes over—”

“Oh, no, no, no, I’m not going back into one of those holding cells,” you started up again, stupidly. “D’you have any idea how _uncomfortable_ those beds are? The bricks in the walls would make better pillows!” You huffed out a breath. “Besides the point. I know you think I’m totally nuts, but I know you’re Bruce Wayne. And I can’t let you die.”

A long, contemplative pause. He seemed to be mulling your words over inside his mind. This entire situation was downright surreal the longer he let you stew in silence. Maybe it was a psychological tactic meant to make you crack, giving you time to reconsider your words and regret whatever the hell you’d dared to utter.

Finally, “Why not?”

Oh, great, now Batman wants to die. You should start asking for a commission for this shit. Seriously, that butterfly better cough up some cash.

“Because…” Wait, did you actually have an answer? Wait, yes you did. “Because then I can’t save the city.”

If you could see his eyebrows, you were positive they were raised. “ _You_ can’t save the city?”

“No no, I didn’t mean it like that—I just—” You let out an exhausted groan, digging the heels of your palms into your eyes until your vision went fuzzy. “You can’t die, okay? How am I gonna let you die knowing I could’ve done something else?”

“Who said anything about dying?”

“ _You_ , you dip, you’re blowing up your whole mansion and whatnot—” You reeled yourself in quickly enough to realise that 1) you’d called Batman a _dip_ to his face and 2) that he seemed awfully casual about this. You looked up at him, tone low and suspicious. “You’re… not… dying.”

“You seem to know enough to probably come to that conclusion.” He was jumping to conclusions, but they were making you look smarter, so you’d take ‘em. 

“You’re… faking your death,” you concluded, on your own this time. You took silence as confirmation. “Holy shit, you’re faking your death! But—why? I mean, yeah, the world finds out you’re Bruce Wayne, and _obviously_ W.E’s gonna have a field trip trying to mop up that PR disaster, but _why_?”

“Let’s just say you’re right for a moment,” he interrupted you. “How does the—how is Bruce Wayne unmasked?”

 _Bruce Wayne._ He spoke of himself in third person. Like Batman wasn’t actually Bruce Wayne, like it was a separate entity.

Or maybe he was doing that psychopath thing where psychopaths referred to themselves in third person. That was a real thing, right?

“On TV,” you said. “Live broadcast. You’re in the… asylum? I think? And Scarecrow and the commissioner are there, and the commissioner just yanks your mask off and Scarecrow stabs you with his needles and it’s really weird—”

“Enough.”

You looked back up at Batman.

“How do you know all of this?”

“I don’t…” Could you tell him about the butterfly? No way. Out of all the things he’d believe from you tonight, it wouldn’t be the butterfly. “I don’t know. Just, all I know is, be careful, okay? Watch out for the Arkham Knight, kick Scarecrow’s ass, don’t go to the asylum. End of story.”

* * *

No, it was not the end of the story.

The militia of the Arkham Knight had forced their way into the building, and suddenly there was the blazing of a machine gun as everyone ducked for cover and failed.

Just before the bullets could pierce the air in front of you, one seemed to take the shape of a butterfly. _Will you choose?_

“I choose,” you gasped out, before the bullets hit you.

* * *

You found yourself standing in front of the calendar again.

And again.

And again.

You made lots of mistakes. You screwed up lots of times. Each ended as worse as the last, some more violent than others but ultimately underpinned by the frustration you felt when that goddamn fucking butterfly settled itself on your hand, your shoulder, the object closest to you, and repeated its motto of _save the city_ and _will you choose?_

And each and every time, you said _yes, I choose._

You were starting to loathe yourself for it.

What if you said _no_ to it? What would happen, then? Would you die? Be in purgatory? Would you move on with your life with the knowledge that you _could’ve_ chosen, and that you _could’ve_ done it right and you _could’ve_ saved the city and _could’ve_ been rid of the butterfly for forever?

You never risked it. You said yes every time, no matter how much it hurt.

* * *

You found yourself standing in front of the calendar again.

The tear of the page and the flutter of the paper into the wastebasket resemble butterfly wings, you realised with some sense of irony that managed to curl nausea in the back of your throat. It was awful. You never wanted to look at this fucking calendar again. Maybe next time you wouldn’t give in to your impulses and you’d just _leave_ the page there to suffer and think about its decisions.

Yet you never did.

Yet every decision you made wasn’t _enough_ —it somehow always ended up that Batman blew up his mansion, or that the city stayed engulfed in fear gas, or that some thug ended up getting his hands on you, and let’s not forget that one time you were pacing around the city in despair to find some clues on what to do and ended up smack-bang in the centre of one of the militia’s checkpoints. So many bullets turned into butterflies on that particular round.

It was somewhat useful. You did learn a lot. Batman was Bruce Wayne, Robin was Tim Drake, Nightwing was Dick Grayson, Oracle—Barbara Gordon, who had been your tutor in high school, ironically enough—got kidnapped, and maybe you had to do something about that. One particularly risky escapade had managed to get your heart stuck in your throat as you learned the tragic truth about the Arkham Knight.

Jason Todd, one of your closer friends during high school. That is, until he disappeared and people assumed he moved to Peru to start an alpaca farm or whatever it was eccentric rich kids did when they got bored of _living._

Sometimes, you found Batman and told him everything you knew. On occasion, he believed you. Other times, he shrugged you off and insisted that you had no idea what you were talking about, and that this was no joke, and he got particularly touchy when you tried to bring up the Arkham Knight’s true identity, revealing that once again you didn’t know _enough._

And you failed and you failed and you failed.

* * *

You found yourself standing in front of the calendar again.

_They’ll get a charred crater if they try. Run, get out of here! Oracle’s not responding. Here, let me give you a commpiece so you can stay updated. I don’t know who you think you are— Has fear finally driven the Batman mad? We’re standing outside of Wayne Manor after it was just confirmed that Bruce Wayne is under the Caped Crusader’s cowl… City engulfed in fear toxin, not a hint of life in sight. Maybe… send Scarecrow to lockup ASAP. The Arkham Knight, it’s Jason Todd! You can’t just die on me! Why am I in front of this stupid calendar again?! But I can’t let you do that. I can’t let you die knowing I could’ve tried to help you save the city. Will you choose?_

You found yourself standing in front of the calendar again.

* * *

Death by Beyblade—who knew it would happen?

Stupid abandoned mall. Fucker had evaded your sight and suddenly the world was on an axis and you’d broken your neck from tripping over a goddamn _Beyblade._

The butterfly didn’t seem to care too much just how you died. After all, one cycle ago you’d died by foolishly running into the tunnels below the mall and letting the unrelenting grinders of the gargantuan drill the Arkham Knight had manned. How bloody that had been.

_Will you choose?_

“Fuck you,” you gasped out.

You chose anyway.

* * *

“Hey, Batman?”

He turned back to you, clearly not impressed with you taking up even _more_ of his time. Your throat felt dry, stomach ill, chest clenched and hands shaky. Yet you willed yourself to talk regardless.

“How do you do it? Go out there every night, save the city and whatnot. How do you—how do you know what to do and just do it?”

He paused. After a long silence, he admitted, “I don’t. I don’t know what to do. Nobody ever knows what to do.”

“The future is unpredictable,” you agreed, probably sounding a lot more cryptic than you intended. It was meant to reference your bitterness to the countless ways you’d encountered death and failure so far.

“That it is. Nothing is ever set in stone. There’s always a way out, and there’s always a choice better than the others. But it doesn’t matter whether you take the best choice or the worst choice or know exactly what to do—what matters is what you do with that choice, and how you use your power to choose.”

You were silent.

“It’s not easy. It’s… it’s tough, sometimes.” You felt like you shouldn’t be hearing this. You felt like you’d somehow cracked open Batman’s innermost thoughts, and that managed to scare you. “But the most important decisions with the toughest scales can lead to the best outcomes.”

You could at least appreciate that Batman gave you an honest, albeit overly profound and above all emotionally jarring response.

You found yourself standing in front of the calendar again.

* * *

The butterfly wanted something from you. You resolved to figure out what it was.

So you took every single path possible—every mistake, every choice, every place explorable, you took it upon yourself to see it through. The cycles felt endless, the fatigue less physical and more wound a mark on your soul which you knew would never heal, and it was just so goddamn frustrating that you wanted to tear your hair out.

And then, you found a pattern.

Boy, did you want to cry when you found it.

You were pretty sure you cried anyway.

The first and foremost—you got to the GCPD, talked to Batman, reasoned with him about everything. He dropped you off at the Clock Tower, you reunited with Barbara, the two of you got captured. You made sure she survived by keeping the pressure off her. When you got your one-on-one with the Arkham Knight, you reasoned with the Jason Todd you knew behind the mask, and managed to chip away at the icy exterior of the militia commander who had been hellbent on razing the city to the ground. That led to the deactivation of the bombs, the gradual withdrawal of the tanks. And then you had to get out of the HQ, before the militia grew suspicious of their boss’ activity. But before that, it was imperative the Cloudburst was destroyed. When that was over, you had a long night of rescuing Dick Grayson—every single cycle, without fail, he said the same witty one-liner to you—and then Tim Drake—he was a little less predictable—and then making sure Scarecrow _or_ Barbara didn’t plummet to their deaths. Finally, in the home stretch of the unscathed city, the thugs could _not_ gain access to the precinct, Gordon could _not_ attempt to shoot Batman off the roof, and the rest of the Rogues’ Gallery had to be dealt with by a combination of Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, and the far more lethal Jason Todd, the latter of whom could only take out Pyg and Deathstroke lest he tip the scales of balance.

Most importantly, Batman _had_ to face whatever fear had been wracking inside his mind, and the asylum’s broadcasts could not be touched by anyone.

Only then did the picture fit together.

And somehow, the stars had aligned behind the hapless clouds of Gotham’s autumnal night sky well enough that it all just _worked._ Tim didn’t lose it at the news of Barbaras’ disappearance, Jason was coaxed into reconciling with his age-old grudge with a lot more tears expected from him and you than expected—being partial strangers, it was odd yet somewhat cathartic to cry along with him for all different reasons—and things seemed to fly all too smoothly. Even Scarecrow somehow bent to your silent will despite his usual unpredictability, Batman took his demons head-on with the knowledge that _he_ _could,_ and the city was not blown up or mangled by the clouds of fear gas ravishing it. The last criminal was thrown into intensive lock-up. The sun was rising past the edge of Bleake Island. The manor stayed intact.

Cars started heading back into Gotham. You sat at the edge of Wayne Manor’s grounds, staring up at the mansion with unconcealable awe. Barbara rolled up beside you, patting you on the shoulder tiredly. You could hardly believe your luck, fingers curling into fists as your nails dug into your palm with a sting that told you _no, you were not dreaming._

Jason was somewhere out there. Not with the family—that was a much too sensitive topic to breach for now. Batman loomed over near one end of the street. Dick and Tim paused to let Barbara know they were relieved she was alright, giving you respectful nods and remaining blissfully unaware of you knowing their real names while she wheeled alongside them.

Batman approached. He nodded once, though the disapproval and The Look had finally left his face. He looked tired, even under the cowl. But he also looked relieved.

A black-and-yellow butterfly fluttered above you, and numbly you registered that it was Sunday, the first of November.

“Don’t make me choose again,” you whispered to it, but you held no more despair. You felt tranquil. “But thanks. For letting me choose in the first place.”

The butterfly said nothing.

You felt eerily light, yet the white never came to your eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> *I know this tweet wasn’t around in 2015, but by God is it the best reference I could make. It just makes sense. The dynamic. The power. Anyways. 
> 
> A/N: Alright, hi.
> 
> So, I'm alive, but once again putting off writing. I booted this up as a crack premise passion project after binge-playing Until Dawn, got hung up on the butterfly effect, and then my hand slipped and I wrote a solid 10,000 words. I know, wild. Anyways, this is by no means linked to any other stories, and the whole Jason/Reader tag is more there as an 'if you squint and tilt your head you could see these two ending up together' sort of thing, but most of it was just exploring a time loop where the reader outlasts Gotham. It's kind of bullshit, very much garbage, but it's a lot, so hope you enjoyed. Would be glad to hear feedback! :)


End file.
